Bloggers Quilt Festival - Upriver

We are allowed 2 entries into Bloggers Quilt Festival so my second entry is into the Art Quilt Category.

This is called Upriver and it was made for the Mid-Western branch of the Irish Patchwork Society's exhibition on the 1st June.  The exhibition is called Local Landscapes and the size is 16" x 40".  If you happen to be in Limerick 1st to 6th June please come visit, there will be some beautiful art quilts on display.

One of the first workshops I signed up for when I became a member 2 years ago was a fabric dyeing workshop with Paula Rafferty. We made 11" squares of fabric in glorious rainbow colours and I have had them sitting in a box ever since.

Paula gave a demonstration at one of the meetings of a pictorial technique by Laura Wasilowski and I signed up for both her classes on Craftsy one of them being Landscapes.  I highly recommend these classes, they are full of bright colour and fun projects.

So Limerick, my home town, was founded on the banks of the Shannon, by the Vikings and the river is a massive part of life here.  We have 4 rowing clubs in the city area and walking across the bridges in the late evenings will give the most beautiful sunsets reflecting off the water.  I made a very small sketch and using the rule of thirds came up with a river scene with the sun setting as my composition.

Using bondaweb/steam a seam I freehand cut wavy strips with my rotary cutter and layered them on parchment paper to look like, I hope, flowing water.  The Shannon is tidal and you can get strong currents!

 It needed a little bit more though, so watching Laura's class, where she shared a  technique for the grass cutting zig-zags and layering them too gave me a perfect addition.

I love Kona Navy.  It is probably my favourite dark fabric and I knew I was going to use it to set off the colour so I played with proportions on the computer and ended up with a 3-3.5" border.  

And to give the eye somewhere to travel to I added a boat and again took inspiration from Laura's class and added a tree made of purple (yes it's supposed to be the setting sun having an effect - and it was the darkest colour I had in my hand-dyed fabrics!!!) and the same green in the grass cut into small snippets.

The quilting gave me problems.  I had no trouble with the water, a few skipped stitches on the boat, massive tension problems on the grass and a swirl or two that had to be unpicked and left holes so lots of steam applied!

So this is my colourful sunset on the Shannon that I am calling Upriver for some reason.  No idea why it just seems to fit!  I think maybe I need to give the boat a name...